"I can't tell you the shock when I started watching American TV. I couldn't believe people were putting up with this." A lot of us aren't. I suspect that cause

"I can't tell you the shock when I started watching American TV. I couldn't believe people were putting up with this." A lot of us aren't. I suspect that causes the TV companies to try to squeeze more out of who is left, which is a slow-motion death spiral. Even if you were raised with it, as I basically was, it's gotten a lot worse. I sometimes buy shows that air on prime time on the legacy networks (ABC, CBS, etc.), and over the last few years I've been watching their run times creep steadily downwards. My current record so far is 19min of runtime for a 30min show with a popular 2019 release that I don't want to name to derail the conversation, plus of course the networks tend to shave off the front & back 30 seconds nowadays. If somebody told me they found a 16 I wouldn't be that shocked. By contrast, looking at MASH season 1 (1972) on Amazon, the runtimes are all 26 minutes. Syndication usually ran some cut versions for a bit more time, but, still. That's over 25% less time for a "half hour" timeslot.